Cuts and Bruises
by m.march
Summary: Murphy's been acting cagey and Connor decides it's time to find out why. Twincest. Warnings inside.


Disclaimer: I own neither of these characters.

Warning: Cutting, violence, and swearing.

 **6 Months Ago**

They stumbled drunk down the alleys, weaving their way home after a long night drinking.

"Fuck! If you love her so much, go kiss her and stop telling me about it!" Murphy finally shouted.

Connor looked at him, realizing then that his arm was slung over his brother's shoulders. It seemed he was holding him upright as they walked. "Who?"

Murphy let out a howl of a laugh. "That fuckin' nurse you been talkin' 'bout all night! You were just sayin' you should have gotten her number. If she's so great, go back and get it. Fuck, I dare you! If you love her so much, go find her and lay one on her!"

Connor stopped walking so abruptly that his brother almost didn't have a chance to stop too, both of them wobbling. He'd forgotten the nurse he'd been talking about, but he never liked losing a dare. "I don't love no one more than you," he said, words a little sloppy from the liquor. Murphy laughed, beautiful smile and hazy eyes gleaming in the night, but Connor reached out and hooked his hand behind his brother's neck before they could start walking again. That smile wobbled on his brother's lips, turning confused just before Connor kissed him. It wasn't a peck or a little kiss, either. He held him close and kissed him deep, looking for his soul in that moment and, with Murphy, he always found his soul there waiting for him.

He didn't remember getting home that night, but he remembered the kiss. Murphy didn't bring it up, so he thought he'd forgotten, or maybe Connor had just hoped he had.

 **Present Day**

He couldn't breathe, heart hammering against his ribs. Oh fuck. Oh fuck.

"I said, who 'da fuck did that?" Connor shouted, on top of him, pinning him on the bed with one hand pushing at his thigh to spread it, exposing lines of scabbed cuts and gashes, some almost healed and some nearly fresh.

He'd caught a glimpse of the scabs when Murphy came out of the shower. That had turned into a mild bout of wrestling that landed them right there, on the bed, Murphy naked and Connor angry.

Murphy punched him hard in the side, shoving him off of him and onto the floor. Freed, Murphy jumped up.

Connor sat on his ass on the floor, blinking at his brother, but not his face. He was still staring at his naked thighs. Those blues flared. "Motherfucker, they're on the other side too! Who the hell—"

Murphy jumped over the bed, grabbing his pants, and bolted from the room.

"Murph!" Connor shouted, throwing himself out the door and after his brother down the hall. That little shit had already pulled his pants on and was making his way for the stairs. "Was it that whore?" he shouted. Great. They were _those_ neighbors. Luckily, this dive pay-as-you-stay hotel was full of worse clientele.

"No! Drop it!" Murphy shouted back before vanishing into the stairwell.

Connor ran harder, skidding into the wall to stop before ripping the door open. Murphy was gone. He stood there, listening, waiting to hear a door open or close, up or down, but there was nothing. "Fucker." He stormed back to their room and grabbed his jacket, the keys, and his gun, before he took off again. He left the door unlocked because, without his shirt or his cigarettes, his brother wasn't going far. He'd probably wait until he took off to sneak back in. It was the sort of shit he'd pulled when they were small. He'd never avoid Connor for long even when he was like this, but Connor rarely had the patience to sit and wait for his brother to come around either.

He drove straight to that whorehouse on 2nd. He knew Murphy went there and who he was seeing, but they didn't talk about it. He'd tried bringing it up once, because even though he knew about it—even though Murphy didn't hide it—it felt like a secret and Connor didn't like them to have secrets, probably because they never had any before.

Murphy had answered questions with shrugs or single-word replies, cagey as fuck and skittish. Finally, Connor had given up. Now, he wished he hadn't.

He kicked in the front door of the bordello and flashed his gun at the guard with a glare. Luckily, he knew most of the bouncers in town, so the guy just looked the other way while Connor stormed up the stairs, throwing open doors until he found a certain hooker blowing some fat John. He didn't even have to fire the gun to get the guy to go running out, pants around his ankles and little dick still hard.

Danny stood up, lips swollen and eyes pinched in a sort of fiery anger Connor had only ever seen mastered by hookers. "What the holy fuck are you doing? I'm working here!"

Connor punched the other guy across the jaw. They were about the same height and build, but Danny wasn't exactly a fighter. The light hit threw the other guy back, landing him on the bed with a bounce. Connor kicked the door shut with his heel. "You piece of shit," he started, pulling a knife from his pocket and flipped it open.

Danny's eyes flared at the sight of it. "Wow, wow!" His hands came up, head shaking. Funny how a knife could be more scary than a gun. Does that mean he thinks he wouldn't use the gun? Or just that he's more likely to cut him?

"Ya know, I thought I was gonna kill ya, Danny. I've thought about having a talk with ya for a long time but today, I thought I'd just kill ya." He punched the guy again when he tried to get up from the bed, throwing him back down. "But now, I think I'm just going to carve you up like you carved up my brother."

Danny blinked up at him, still for a moment before his eyes flared and his now bleeding mouth peeled into a grin. "What? No! No, way! That's not on me!" he tried, frantic now, shaking his head. "I don't do that bit! That's all him. He does it himself after we…" He choked back what he was going to say next, eyes cutting from the knife Connor held and back to his face.

Connor waited another second before swearing and taking a step back, still standing between this piece of shit and the door. "Talk."

Danny sat up wearily, head tipping to one side. "What?"

"Yer gonna tell me exactly what happens when Murphy comes here." He couldn't believe he was asking for this. Did he really want to hear about this? Hadn't it tortured him before? Wondering what went on? If someone hurt him? If he at least enjoyed it? And then all those complicated feelings about his brother, his other half, enjoying something without him—wanting something without him.

Danny laughed uneasily. "No way. You'll kill me."

"Aye. I might. But if you lie to me, I'll shoot you in the dick and leave you here."

Danny winced. "O-Okay. What-What part do you want to know about? He comes here and sometimes we fuck…" he said it cautiously, like this might be what upsets Connor. Connor didn't give a shit if his brother was fucking a man or a woman. He cared that his brother had started seeing this particular hooker around the same time he started getting cagey and stopped making eye-contact. He cared about those cuts on his thighs.

"Sometimes? What do ya do the other times?"

Danny froze where he sat. Connor caught the moment he collected himself, looking away for the first time. "He pays me to do it, man. I didn't start it or anything…"

"What does he pay you to do?"

"It's only sometimes! Usually he just comes in, all horny and ashamed, we make out, I strip him down, he puts his face in the pillow and I fuck him," Danny offered up a lot more information on the times they have sex and Connor didn't miss that it was to distract him from the times they didn't.

"You fuck him?" Connor couldn't help but sound skeptical, looking the lean guy over once more. He wasn't petite, but he wasn't big either. Yet, somehow it wasn't a surprise either. "Okay. And the other times?"

Danny chewed his lip, looking at the door over Connor's shoulder once more. He was trapped.

"Sometimes he doesn't want to kiss and fuck. Sometimes… Sometimes he wants me to say mean shit to him and… hit him."

Connor stopped breathing. He dropped the knife but not the gun.

Danny jumped up and back, shoulders hitting the other wall of the small room. "It's never that bad! You'd know if it was, right?"

"Is that when you cut him?"

"No! I said, I don't do that!"

"You just hit him and say… What? What the fuck do you say to him?"

Danny flushed, looking like he might be sick, looking like Connor was the fuckin' monster here. "He never fights back, man! It never gets that bad. He just takes it. I don't think I've ever even seen his eyes, he never looks at me! We don't even talk about it. He just comes in, gives me the cash, and I try to kiss him. If he pushes me away, then I know we're doing the other stuff."

Connor stepped onto the bed and right over it, grabbing Danny by the neck and slamming him up against the wall. His head was spinning. Why the fuck would Murphy want someone to knock him around? At least this explained why it was a secret—why he'd been so uncomfortable talking about it. "What do you say to him?"

"I call him names," Danny confessed, voice a whisper now. "I tell him he's disgusting, and I hate him, and I'm leaving him. I tell him I never want to see him again and that he's not my…"

"Not your what?"

Danny looked like he might cry now—it was that look people got when they thought they were going to say something that got them killed. "I say he's not my brother and I hope he rots in hell."

Connor let him go, taking a step back like the guy had hit him, his face pinching. "What? Why the fuck would… No."

Danny shivered against the wall, not moving from it. "When his face is in the pillow, and I'm fuckin him, it's your name he calls. After that… That's when he carves up the inside of his thighs."

Connor exhaled like he'd been punched again, staggering back another step and bumping into the bed.

"I'm always pretending to be you… whether it's good or I'm saying all those awful things and wailing on him…"

Connor cringed, shook his head, and left. He had a thousand questions, but he couldn't be there anymore, couldn't hear anything else from that stranger. A stranger his brother paid to pretend to be him, to fuck him and sometimes to beat on him and tell him he didn't love him anymore.

He made it all the way to the car before he started swearing. He slammed the heel of his palm against his temple, damning himself. He'd let this happen. He'd turned a blind eye to his brother's pain and told himself not to pry. What the hell had he been thinking? He'd known something was wrong. They always knew when something was wrong with each other. And this had been going on for half a year, ever since that party, ever since the night Connor kissed Murphy on a dare. He'd thought maybe it had sparked Murphy's interest in guys—hence this whorehouse—but he hadn't thought…

He drove back to the shitty building where they were staying and went straight up to their room. He caught Murphy heading out and pushed him back in. His brother's eyes flared, meeting his gaze for a split second before darting away again. "I'm goin' out. Get outta ma way…" Murphy tried, shouldering his brother to the side but Connor pushed him back, kicking the door shut.

"No. We gotta talk," Connor decided. He had to put this right.

Fear flared in his brother's eyes and it stabbed right at Connor's heart. Murphy tried to get by him again, desperate for the door now. Connor caught his arm and spun him. They struggled but Connor got the upper hand, pushing Murphy's chest up against the wall, pinning him there, but his brother kept struggling. "Stop," Connor bit out, pushing his body up against Murphy's to hold him there. He kept fighting. "Stop, Murph. I'm na angry. I'm na fighting you," he pushed his chest flat to his brother's back and turned his face into Murphy's cheek. "Stop," he said gruffly, exhaling the plea.

Murphy froze, barely breathing, but Connor could feel how tightly wound he was, like his whole body was cringing. "Ya know?" Murphy whispered, so quiet that Connor barely heard him.

He let go of the arm he'd been holding at Murphy's back, but kept his body pushed up to the wall, afraid he'd run again if he let up. "Aye. I know. I know."

Murphy's body heaved between his and the wall, head ducking down toward his shoulder. "Please, don't make me leave. I-I'll never let anyone find out. I promise. I'm so sorry. Please don't leave, Conn." The words came rushing out of him, small and cracking in his throat.

Connor shook his head, turning him around against the wall and touching his hair, his cheek. Murphy cringed away from him, eyes shut and body almost curled.

"Ya really think I could do that? Murph, stop. Look at me," Connor nearly shook him, trying to uncoil him. "Ya really think I'd hit you for this and tell you, what? That I don't want to be brothers? Fuck, man, I'm the one that kissed you."

"Ya were drunk…" Murphy mumbled, uncurling a little and looking up through his lashes at his brother, sideways like it might be a trick.

Connor almost laughed. "I'm drunk plenty but I mean what I say and what I do. Ya know that, Murph. Ya know I love you."

"That ain't the same as…" He winced when he almost said it, shaking his head instead and looking up at Connor with big, worried eyes. He looked like he had when they were teens, when he'd just stolen something from someone he shouldn't and didn't know how to get out of trouble. But he'd come to Connor for help back then. He'd always come to him. "I promise, I won't say nothin' 'bout it again. I promise."

"Shut up," Connor ground out, grabbing his face and kissing him to make that plea end. He couldn't stand it, the way his brother was begging him like he'd wronged him—like he'd done something to ruin them. He held on to his face even when he broke the kiss. "Shut up and listen, okay? I love you. I'll always love you and nothing and no one can change that. Yer my brother. Mine. And I'm yours. There's nothing in this world you can do that will make me leave you or stop me from following you wherever you go."

Murphy shook out a breath and finally those eyes turned up to Connor, finally he looked back at him—really looked and Connor knew he'd see the truth of it because, as always, their souls were bare to one another. He held the side of Murphy's neck, thumb catching the leaping of his pulse, and turning his chin a little higher. "I'm sorry," Connor whispered. "I thought ya forgot or ya didna' want to talk about it. I didna' know you… I didna' know."

Murphy swallowed hard, mind racing, hands still balled at his sides to keep from grabbing on to Connor, to keep from throwing himself into something he'd thought too much about. Obsessed over. Tortured himself because of. "Are ya saying that to make me feel better or because ya mean it?" Murphy whispered cautiously.

Connor laughed, a rough sound that rolled off his lips and onto Murphy's with them so close. "I never told ya before, that I thought of ya that way, because I was 'fraid you'd do things ya didna' want, to make me happy," he almost choked on it when he admitted it. It had been the fear that kept him strong in resisting those impulses. Murphy always did what Connor wanted in the end. Oh, he kicked up a storm sometimes and whined until they were both sick of it, but he always went where Connor wanted to go and did what Connor wanted to do. He was sure it would have killed him if Murphy had done things, laid beneath him, just because he loved him and not because he wanted to.

That had kept him in check since they were twenty and he first realized what he wanted—what he dreamed of. He'd only slipped up the once, that night when they were drunk and he stole a kiss. Now his brother was in love with him and afraid of the same damn thing—that he would lie and give himself just to make him happy.

Connor touched his forehead to Murphy's. "No pulled-punches pact," he said.

Murphy's mouth pressed skeptically. "That's meant for being honest about people we were interested in… so we could figure out who should have dibs. And we were teens."

Connor smiled, drawing a circle against his brother's neck with his thumb. "It works here. I'll give you one-hundred percent true answers, no pulling punches, and you do the same. We show all our cards, get it all on the table, and work it out from there." He watched Murphy thinking about it, still tightly wound with the sleeves of his sweater balled in his fists anxiously. "There's nothing you can say that will make me leave you," he promised again, pushing his forehead to Murphy's a little harder. "Nothing."

Murphy nodded stiffly at last and Connor let out a sigh of relief. "Ya have that hooker pretend to be me?"

Murphy winced, immediately regretting this agreement and looking away, anywhere but at his brother. "Aye."

"Why do ya have him say shitty things to you and beat on you?"

Murphy closed his eyes, twisting against the wall like he might just push himself back and through it to escape. "I guess I thought it would make me stop."

"Stop?"

"Stop thinking about you like that. Stop wanting things we're not supposed to want. Just stop."

Connor sighed, hand sliding up to his brother's cheek, wishing he'd open his eyes. "Did you really think I'd say those things? That I'd hurt you?"

"No," Murphy whispered, eyes opening to look back at him. "Not really. But it was too much to risk."

Connor nodded. He could understand that. "And the cuts? The ones on your thighs? Did he do that too?" He'd go back and kill him if he had.

Murphy exhaled but shook his head, tonguing his upper lip and looking suddenly exhausted. "I did it. After…" He squirmed again, trying to wiggle out of his place against he wall, beneath his brother.

Connor wouldn't let him go.

"When he fucked me, I pretended it was you. I thought things I shouldn't think… it felt good," he confessed, voice so quiet. "So, afterward, I did it. I just felt so bad… I needed to do something."

Connor exhaled but nodded. "Okay. Okay. But not anymore. Promise me, Murph. No more of that." He ducked his head to find his brother's gaze. He'd know a lie if he heard it.

"Yeah. Okay." Murphy sounded tired. Ashamed. Embarrassed. Raw.

Connor didn't like it. It wasn't the way Murphy usually sounded. He was usually wild and bold and a little bit childish. "Okay. So, tell me what ya want?"

"Why do I have to do all the answering? What the fuck do you want?" Murphy snapped, pushing him away and taking a couple steps around the small room. He looked like a tiger trapped in a zoo.

Connor smiled a little because that was more like his brother. He threw himself at Murphy, catching that glint of surprise before he tackled him onto the bed. Murphy tensed, landing under him, eyes big with surprise. Connor pinned one of his shoulders down, lifting up enough to watch his brother's face when he ground his hips down into Murphy's. "I want you," Connor confessed and watched that mouth tremble, dropping open and lean body arching under his, hips rolling up against the pressure. "And I think ya want me too."

Murphy shook, fingers twisting in the thin bed cover, resisting that urge to grab at him, still afraid that if he let go his brother would be disgusted. "A-Aye…" he exhaled his confession.

Connor pushed Murphy's sweater up his chest, fingers pressing at tight muscles. His other hand curved around Murphy's back, lifting him to pull that sweater off over his head. His hips continued to rub down on Murphy's, watching his expressions intently for any signs that this wasn't what he wanted. If he hadn't heard and seen the proof of Murphy's wants, he wouldn't dare to try this at all. Connor moaned, surprising himself, when he felt Murphy grow hard against his own arousal. "Shit…"

Murphy's sounds choked in his throat, those eyes flashing open to look up at him, raw with panic.

Connor kissed him before he could retreat into his fears. He was going to make him forget all those thoughts, all that pain. He was going to fix what he'd ruined.


End file.
